from the hey-at-least-we-stopped-selling-cigarettes dept.
Lawmakers want HHS to revise health privacy law to require warrants:
All of the big pharmacy chains in the US hand over sensitive medical records to law enforcement without a warrant—and some will do so without even running the requests by a legal professional, according to a congressional investigation.
The revelation raises grave medical privacy concerns, particularly in a post-Dobbs era in which many states are working to criminalize reproductive health care. Even if people in states with restrictive laws cross state lines for care, pharmacists in massive chains, such as CVS, can access records across borders.
Lawmakers noted the pharmacies' policies for releasing medical records in a letter dated Tuesday to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra. The letter—signed by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), and Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.)—said their investigation pulled information from briefings with eight big prescription drug suppliers.
All eight of the pharmacies said they do not require law enforcement to have a warrant prior to sharing private and sensitive medical records, which can include the prescription drugs a person used or uses and their medical conditions. Instead, all the pharmacies hand over such information with nothing more than a subpoena, which can be issued by government agencies and does not require review or approval by a judge.
[...] For now, HIPAA regulations grant patients the right to know who is accessing their health records. But, to do so, patients have to specifically request that information—and almost no one does that. "Last year, CVS Health, the largest pharmacy in the nation by total prescription revenue, only received a single-digit number of such consumer requests," the lawmakers noted.
"The average American is likely unaware that this is even a problem," the lawmakers said.
Originally spotted on Schneier on Security.
Related:
- Websites Selling Abortion Pills are Sharing Sensitive Data With Google
- Meta Faces Lawsuit for Allegedly Collecting Patient Health Data Without Consent
- Google has Access to Detailed Health Records on Tens of Millions of Americans
Related Stories
Google has access to detailed health records on tens of millions of Americans
Google quietly partnered last year with Ascension—the country's second-largest health system—and has since gained access to detailed medical records on tens of millions of Americans, according to a November 11 report by The Wall Street Journal.
The endeavor, code-named "Project Nightingale," has enabled at least 150 Google employees to see patient health information, which includes diagnoses, laboratory test results, hospitalization records, and other data, according to internal documents and the newspaper's sources. In all, the data amounts to complete medical records, WSJ notes, and contains patient names and birth dates.
The move is the latest by Google to get a grip on the sprawling health industry. At the start of the month, Google announced a deal to buy Fitbit, prompting concerns over what it will do with all the sensitive health data amassed from the popular wearables. Today's news will likely spur more concern over health privacy issues.
Neither Google nor Ascension has notified patients or doctors about the data sharing. Ascension—a Catholic, non-profit health system—includes 34,000 providers who see patients at more than 2,600 hospitals, doctor offices, and other facilities across 21 states and the District of Columbia.
[...] Both Google and Ascension said that the project is compliant with federal health information privacy protections and is "underpinned by a robust data security and protection effort."
Health privacy experts told WSJ that the project appears to be legal under the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). As the newspaper notes, the law "generally allows hospitals to share data with business partners without telling patients, as long as the information is used 'only to help the covered entity carry out its health care functions.'"
Facebook may have violated patient privacy laws:
Meta may have scooped up sensitive medical information without consent. The Verge reports that two proposed class-action lawsuits accuse the company and hospitals of violating HIPAA, the California Invasion of Privacy Act and other laws by collecting patient data without consent. Meta's Pixel analytic tracking tool allegedly sent health statuses, appointment details and other data to Facebook when it was present on patient portals.
In one lawsuit from last month, a patient said Pixel gathered data from the UC San Francisco and Dignity Health portals that was used to deliver ads related to heart and knee issues. The second lawsuit, from June, is broader and claims at least 664 providers shared medical info with Facebook through Pixel.
[...] They also follow a string of privacy-related US legal action against the social media giant. Meta is facing a DC Attorney General suit over Cambridge Analytica's collection of more than 70 million Americans' personal data. The company is also grappling with lawsuits over its deactivated facial recognition system, and only this year settled a 2012 class-action over the use of tracking cookies. These latest courtroom battles suggest that concerns about Meta's data gathering practices are far from over, even as the company makes its own efforts to crack down on misuse.
Previously: Facebook is Receiving Sensitive Medical Information From Hospital Websites – the Markup
Law enforcement can potentially use this data for prosecutions:
Online pharmacies that sell abortion pills are sharing sensitive data with Google and other third parties, which may allow law enforcement to prosecute those who use the medications to end their pregnancies, a ProPublica analysis has found.
Using a tool created by the Markup, a nonprofit tech-journalism newsroom, ProPublica ran checks on 11 online pharmacies that sell abortion medication to reveal the web tracking technology they use. Late last year and in early January, ProPublica found web trackers on the sites of at least nine online pharmacies that provide pills by mail: Abortion Ease, BestAbortionPill.com, PrivacyPillRX, PillsOnlineRX, Secure Abortion Pills, AbortionRx, Generic Abortion Pills, Abortion Privacy and Online Abortion Pill Rx.
These third-party trackers, including a Google Analytics tool and advertising technologies, collect a host of details about users and feed them to tech behemoth Google, its parent company, Alphabet, and other third parties, such as the online chat provider LiveChat. Those details include the web addresses the users visited, what they clicked on, the search terms they used to find a website, the previous site they visited, their general location, and information about the devices they used, such as whether they were on a computer or phone. This information helps websites function and helps tech companies personalize ads.
But the nine sites are also sending data to Google that can potentially identify users, ProPublica's analysis found, including a random number that is unique to a user's browser, which can then be linked to other collected data.
"Why in the world would you do that as a pharmacy website?" said Serge Egelman, research director of the Usable Security and Privacy Group at the International Computer Science Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. "Ultimately, it's a pretty dumb thing to do."
(Score: 0, Troll) by crafoo on Sunday December 24, @07:58AM (6 children)
"reproductive health care" - come on. just call it what it is. using euphemisms like this signal to everyone that you know what you are doing and are ashamed.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Sunday December 24, @08:49AM
Isn't there some country that's using euthanasia as a "health care" option now (obfuscated behind processes and pricing)? This is perfectly in line with those kinds of modern ideologies.
If you have no health, you no longer need health care. Success!
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 24, @09:11AM (1 child)
Just call it what it is: you want more deaths. And, you'll do anything to keep the conversation away from that fact.
It is not a euphamism. Abortions are basic health care. At a bare minimum, take a look at ectopic mispregnancies before anyone else dies. I ain't doing your homework.
(Score: -1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 24, @12:30PM
Yeah, I think Jesus said the same thing. Wasn't that the Sermon on the Mount? Or, did he say that at Gethsemane? "If thine child offend thee, chop it out. That whole "be fruitful and multiply" thing was just a joke."
(Score: 5, Touché) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday December 25, @01:26AM (2 children)
There are far worse fates than being aborted in utero. Like being born into a hopelessly dysfunctional situation where you're abused and neglected, for one thing. Why don't you give a shit about the baby *after* it's born, huh?
Besides which, why do you care? You very obviously don't have a uterus, will never be pregnant, and if there is any justice in this world, the first and last vagina you will ever spend any time near was your mother's when you were born. Assuming you didn't just spawn at the bottom of a disused septic tank somewhere.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday December 26, @03:47PM (1 child)
A couple I knew years ago were expecting and thrilled until the doctor informed them that the fetus had no possibility of living and urgently urged an abortion. They would have none of it.
The baby lived for twenty minutes with its heart outside its chest. A very short, torturous life. Abortion would have been a kindness.
Your abortion is none of my fucking business. Her abortion is none of yours unless you're her doctor. There are so-called "Christians" who posit that their "Christian faith" makes them against abortion, obviously never having read the Bible. It says nothing whatever about abortion or when life begins.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday December 30, @03:44AM
Actually it does, back in the Old Testament. There is a passage in Exodus about how if someone strikes a pregnant woman and she miscarries, the penalty is...a fine. Not death, as would be the case for murder. And another in Numbers about how, if a man suspects his wife is cheating, he has the priest mix up an abortifacient potion to kill the growing fetus.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by DadaDoofy on Sunday December 24, @02:35PM (16 children)
"many states are working to criminalize reproductive health care"
No, we aren't stupid. Killing a baby just before it is delivered (or just after, as is legal in states like NY), has absolutely zero to do with womens' healthcare. It's murder plain and simple.
Ironically, while ten in every thousand pregnancies of white women end in abortion, almost three times the number of pregnancies of black woman end in abortion. If it were anything else, this so-called "reproductive healthcare" would be called out as racist and ended immediately. However, we get get nothing but crickets from the from the far left on this. Apparently, black lives just don't matter to them.
https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2017.304042 [aphapublications.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 24, @09:24PM (10 children)
> Killing a baby just before it is delivered (or just after, as is legal in states like NY)
do you have a source for that happening or even legal?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Sunday December 24, @10:24PM (9 children)
https://www.axios.com/2022/05/14/abortion-state-laws-bans-roe-supreme-court [axios.com]
I bolded that most relevant portion. No limits. If Baby is due on June 2, you can abort it on June 1 or June 2, or June whatever if it happens to be "late". And, with such liberal rules, who is going to care if the baby is actually delivered, THEN the decision is made to withhold health care? No limits.
Perhaps you'll remember discussions in Florida and Virginia, with post-natal abortions the subject of discussion. https://slate.com/technology/2012/03/after-birth-abortion-the-pro-choice-case-for-infanticide.html [slate.com]
Baby killers know no limits.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 25, @12:36AM (4 children)
Does it really work that way? How often does that happen? And how about after the baby is delivered? I seem to remember a while back some politicians saying something about beheadings or something after the baby arrives, which I think is what the OP must be talking about.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 25, @03:12AM (3 children)
From my link above,
What seems obvious to me, is that the second trimester should be the normal limit, but that exceptions should be passed into law for any woman whose life is endangered by the pregnancy. Late term abortions are the exception today, but they should be mandated to remain exceptions.
Personally speaking, I would rather see women rewarded for having babies, rather than encouraged to abort their babies. 'Muricans are reproducing below replacement level today. Businessmen and politicians are intentionally importing illegal aliens to make up for that future lack of available labor. It's past time to turn the tide on that nonsense.
You've heard of that Great Replacement conspiracy theory? Yeah - it's working. Encourage Americans to kill themselves off, and we'll just buy all the cheap labor we want from Latin America.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday December 30, @03:48AM (2 children)
I was wondering when you were finally going to break cover on that one :) Ahhh, the Great Replacement.
Hey, dipfuck, you wanna know how to get Americans to reproduce more? PAY LIVING WAGES AND GET UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE GOING LIKE IN THE NORDIC NATIONS. People aren't reproducing because the US is turning into a third-world hellscape thanks to shitgluttons like you who yell and scream for policy decisions that condemn their babies to fates far, far worse than being aborted in utero.
Your aims are at direct loggerheads with one another. Make it worth peoples' time to reproduce and raise families and they'll do it. If you actually gave two shits, you'd be agitating for a much stronger social safety net, clean power, universal healthcare, sex education including contraception and free access thereto, and all the other scaaaaaary lib'rul ideas that make you piss your Depends on the nightly in fear of some woman, somewhere, having control over her own body. Stupid motherfucker.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday December 30, @12:19PM (1 child)
Or, we could do E-Verify and Close Biden's Border, and that 'living wage' would start happening overnight. We can't claw back all the manufacturing that traitors sent to China, but we could execute a few dozen of the cocksuckers, publicly. It's not too late to lock up Biden and Harris, or even Clinton. History won't be kind to Surge the Border Joe.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 01, @09:18PM
[citation needed]
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 25, @08:51PM (3 children)
Given that is actual murder, I'd say the medical providers would care.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 25, @09:11PM (2 children)
Well, yes, it is actual murder. But, you're missing the point of the discussion. People are arguing that it is acceptable to allow newborns to die. They are arguing that it might be alright to allow babies to die weeks, or even months after they are born. The more absurd left insists on no limits, otherwise known as 'abortion on demand'. If they had their way, no mother could ever be charged for murdering her children. The kid was 15 years old? It was just a delayed late term abortion.
Add in the other absurdities from the left, including 'birthing person', and an inability to define a woman. Soon enough, you'll have male sex predators beating their murder raps, because they identify as mothers, blah blah blah. Once you embrace insanity, there is no end to that yellow brick road.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 26, @12:01AM (1 child)
I don't see any of those people here - even with the . Perhaps you should preach to the audience that's here?
Let's see if that will be a problem first.
My take on this is that I'm just not interested in a world that never changes - set roles and mores routinely is a path to stagnation. While stuff like the above absurdities can be too dynamic (like eternally struggling to remember a bunch of random pronouns at the office) or even abusive (punishing someone 1984-style because they couldn't recall the latest pronoun du jour), so can various other belief systems. I don't see a special danger in this particular one, and it helps keep things from becoming boring.
I have to add that I don't believe there is a real danger of this becoming a rapefest.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 26, @03:29AM
FTFM.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday December 25, @01:33AM (4 children)
Aren't you part of the same "if you can't feed 'em don't breed 'em" crowd though? If anything, abortion is responsible if you know you can't care for a baby.
You people are constantly talking out of both sides of your mouths, and it's plainly obvious to anyone brighter than a third grader (which doesn't include your kind apparently) that none of you give two shits about actual babies and children. You just want to punish straight and bisexual women for having sex in ways you don't like, that being, as anything but chattel for males. Fuck off with that.
I do, however, have an idea that will definitely work to prevent abortions: mandatory vasectomies for all males over the age of 12. Take and preserve a sperm sample of course, but every male gets the snip at teenagerhood, and is only allowed to get it reversed once they can prove they're responsible enough to raise a child. If your goal is really to prevent abortions (spoiler alert: you're not fooling anyone) this is the most effective, least invasive, and most applicable method. After all, what causes pregnancy? Sperm. And men can get an almost unlimited number of women pregnant. Why don't we, er, cut the problem off at the root? As it were :)
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 25, @09:16PM (3 children)
May or may not care about children - at least we don't want to murder them. How can you claim to care about someone or something that you want to destroy?
(Score: 1, Informative) by khallow on Tuesday December 26, @03:30AM (1 child)
At least until they're born and become fifty million liberals. Then it depends on how much of a threat "we" think they are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 30, @10:22PM
Light bulb moment: lets encourage the libs to abort abort abort. They'll die off. Not soon enough, but we'll be doing the future a favor.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday December 30, @03:41AM
Shieeeeet, boy, you KNOW you're a clown when Mr. Hallow is the better person!
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...